CNN’s Kaitlan Collins has exposed a devastating flaw in President Donald Trump’s claims on his Reflecting Pool fiasco.
The star host called BS on Trump’s claim that the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool turned green with algae because “vandals” cut up its new, expensive, “American flag blue” lining.
Collins began by playing a clip of the president saying on Tuesday that somebody “went in with a knife and cut it.”
“They cut it up good,” Trump said. “And then they cut it 200, 350-foot slips in the form of lots of little slips, a real horrible stuff.”
Collins pointed out that Trump has provided no pictures or video to back up his claim. She then reminded the president that he said in May that it would be impossible to cut the lining—chips of which are visible inside the pool—with a knife.
“This will last for at least 50 years,” Trump said on May 4. “You’ll never have a leak. It’s very strong. You couldn’t, if you had a knife—I don’t want to give anybody ideas—if you had a knife, you can’t even cut it. So strong, so powerful, it’s like powerful rubber. It is beautiful. Sealed.”
Now, the 80-year-old Trump is desperately trying to spin his Reflecting Pool mess as the result of Democrats trying to sabotage him. Collins noted in her segment that Trump is posting about the Reflecting Pool as much as he is about Iran this week.
The pool, an iconic part of the National Mall, is now surrounded by National Guard troops, apparently patrolling for vandals.
The failed Reflecting Pool renovation cost an eye-popping $16 million in taxpayer money—awarded through no-bid contracts to companies with ties to Trump, including a longtime donor—and now requires additional repairs that will be completed after the Fourth of July holiday.
Trump claimed in a Truth Social post on Tuesday that six people have been arrested and seven have been cited “for the damage they did to our Country’s now beautiful Reflecting Pool.”
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt also told Fox News on Monday that six arrests have been made. “The vandalism is very real,” she claimed, referring to the nameless perpetrators as “deranged individuals” who are “longtime donors” to Democrats.
It did not take long for the president’s American flag blue pool to turn Kermit-green. Workers have since been photographed dumping chemicals into the pool in hopes of killing the algal bloom.
The project now has a waterfowl body count, with a dead duckling spotted floating in the putrid green water on Sunday. Two other dead ducks, one adult and one juvenile, were also found on Sunday at a pond on the Constitution Gardens on the National Mall—about 250 feet from the Reflecting Pool.
